Chapter 29
Chapter
I returned to the Belvedere as speedily as the teeming streets would permit.
I had expected to encounter Stoker hard at work on his project, but he was nowhere to be found.
He had left a note for me—if one can reasonably call a few words scribbled on the back of a piece of paper still sticky with gingerbread crumbs and stuck to the wall with a boning knife a note.
I plucked it free and spent a good few minutes deciphering the squiggles Stoker had made with the pencil stub he habitually carried in his pocket.
Gone to see abt walrus was what I finally interpreted.
I screwed the paper up and tossed it to the dogs to play with.
I wanted nothing more than to discuss my findings with Stoker, and his absence was a source of considerable irritation.
I decided to do a little housekeeping whilst I awaited his return, but as I busied myself tidying the Belvedere, I could not help but feel a mounting sense of something amiss.
It was nothing so strong as premonition; the gentle reader must not believe I am blessed with supernatural gifts.
Say rather that it was a flutter of intuition that brushed my face with gentle wings.
And as I worked, tamping pages of manuscripts and dusting assorted dead things, the delicate prickling turned into outright buzzing.
“Drat the man,” I muttered to the caryatid I was dusting. “Where the devil has he got himself to?”
It occurred to me, in light of our previous detectival adventures which had so often resulted in bodily injury to Stoker, that he might once more be in danger.
I had no logical reason, at this point, to think so.
His absence might well have been perfectly legitimate.
He had been obsessed with the walrus for some months, and he had apparently been given a golden opportunity to express his opinions on the matter forcefully and to the people who might actually listen.
It was little wonder he had left so precipitately.
And yet. Unable to dismiss the notion of an imperilled Stoker, I cleaned all the harder for perhaps half an hour more, then threw down my dusters. It was entirely possible that the walrus had been so much bait to lure him from his aerie for some nefarious purpose.
I pushed the thought from my mind and moved purposefully towards the area Stoker had curtained off from prying eyes. I had no business there; it was a violation of Stoker’s privacy as both a gentleman and a scholar. It was unthinkable to trespass upon his work.
So, I gave it not a moment’s consideration but simply strode up to the curtain and yanked it aside with a firm tug.
What lay beyond was so entirely unexpected that I could not quite believe my eyes.
I surveyed the creature he had been working on with the frankest astonishment, and I made a mental note to have a robust discussion with Stoker upon the subject the first moment it was possible.
“Oh, my very stars,” said a juvenile voice behind me. I knew who it was before I turned.
“Lady Rose,” I said repressively to Lord Rosemorran’s youngest and most wayward child, “you are not permitted in the Belvedere without either my or Stoker’s express permission.”
She was looking past me with rapt attention fixed upon the trophy Stoker had been working upon in secret. “I want it,” she said, moving forwards, hands outstretched.
“Absolutely not. You are not to touch it,” I said, catching her around the waist and dragging her backwards. “Your hands are green.”
“Not forever,” she assured me. “But I was putting dye into Arthur’s hair tonic, and I may have spilt a bit.”
“Lady Rose,” I said, biting back my rising temper, “I do not have time, nor do I care to inquire, why you are torturing your brother by dyeing his hair green.”
“What if I pay you to let me touch it?” she asked craftily. She reached into her pocket where, no doubt, all sorts of grubby treasures resided. She extracted something and extended her hand, opening her palm to show me an item that glittered. A coin.
It was unmistakably the guinea that Stoker and I had been trading back and forth for the better part of three years.
It had been minted in the time of George III, and the old king’s nose had been greatly worn away through the ninety-odd years it had been in circulation.
I ran my fingers over the familiar profile, a sudden chill clutching at my heart, for Stoker would never have been careless with the coin, representing as it did the many adventures we had embarked upon together.
Hardly an investigation had passed that we had not wagered it upon the outcome, the winner gleefully taking it in turn to keep the coin safe until the next time it should be risked.
If he had lost it, it was because something had happened to him. Or someone.
And I had a terrible, gnawing suspicion I knew exactly who it might have been.
“Where did you find that coin?” I demanded.
“On the kerb outside,” she said in a tone so docile one might almost imagine her a sweet and tractable child. It would be, I hope I have persuaded the astute reader, a fatal mistake. “Stoker dropped it when he was getting into the carriage with the lady.”
“The lady? What lady?” To my knowledge all of the parties associated with the walrus debacle were men of the stuffiest and most turgid variety. “Did she have black hair? Dressed a trifle outlandishly?”
She nodded, peering around me to look once more at Stoker’s work in progress. “Can I ride it?”
“Most definitely not,” I told her. I put a quelling hand to her shoulder to steer her out of the area and back towards my desk.
I paused to collect a few items I suspected I should need in the course of my next activities—a waterproof container of vestas, a selection of blades, and my handy cheese wire, coiled neatly into a tin box that used to hold humbugs.
I blessed the fact that I was wearing my hunting costume, for I would never have dared to take the time to change.
My flat boots were the perfect footwear, and the skirt concealed my narrow trousers, lending an appearance of propriety to an ensemble suited to scaling Mont Blanc herself.
I stuffed a few more items into my pockets including a paper twist of Stoker’s favourite honeycomb in case he should be in need of sustenance when I found him.
My flask of aguardiente was freshly filled, and I was as equipped for the endeavour as I should ever be.
I clapped my hat onto my head, spearing it with the sharpest of my hatpins, Lady Rose’s eyes round with interest as she watched.
“You are leaving when I do, and I am locking the door behind me,” I warned her.
“I must discover where they have taken Stoker.” I only wished I knew whether they were taking him to the house or to Highgate.
The delay in choosing wrongly could mean the difference between life and death for him, I realised with a pang so sharp it nearly drove me to my knees.
“I know where he has gone,” Lady Rose said with a matter-of-fact insouciance she might have been discussing hair ribbons.
I knelt and took her shoulders in my hands, none too gently. “Lady Rose, tell me where.”
She tipped her head, considering her price, the little felon. “I want a postcard.”
I blinked at her. “A postcard?”
“From Hampton Court Palace. They sell postcards with ghosts on them. Nanny told me, and I want one for my collection.”
Lady Rose, following in her forebears’ august footsteps, had decided to indulge her own acquisitive instincts and begin assembling favoured articles for purposes of display.
Unlike her kinsmen, her collection tended towards the macabre, no doubt in part due to her experiences with an Anatomical Venus during our last investigation. [*]
“Your collection?” If a person could breathe fire, I believe I might have done so.
I know it took an herculean effort not to shake the child, but I merely gripped her tighter and forced my voice to calmness.
It has always been my belief that one should never strike nor shout at a child, although I would have happily made an exception long enough to drag Lady Rose to the pond by her pigtails and toss her into the duckweed.
But whilst such actions might assuage my frustration, they were certain to cause more problems in the end as well as delay me further. “Very well. A postcard. With a ghost. From Hampton Court.”
“Do you promise?” The eyes narrowed as they met mine.
“I do.”
She spat into her hand and held it out for mine. “Swear to it.”
“Adults do not spit,” I told her.
“Father does when he has a chicken bone,” she began.
I may have lifted her off her feet the merest bit, but she kicked me hard upon the shin, and I released her at once. “You have my word,” I ground out through gritted teeth. “Now, where has Stoker gone?”
“Highgate,” she said, inspecting her lurid green fingernails. “I heard the lady call out to the driver as they got into the carriage.”
“Thank heaven for that,” I breathed. I resisted the urge to pat her on the head. (The last time I had done so, my hand had come away with an unpleasant stickiness I found nearly impossible to wash free.) “Excellent work, Rose.” I ushered her from the Belvedere then, locking up as I had promised.
She lingered upon the doorstep, her jaw set in a mulish expression as she blocked my path. “Mind you bring me the best postcard you can find. Perhaps you ought to bring two and I can choose my favorite.”
“I will bring you a dozen, you little demon, if you get out of my way,”
She stepped aside, still regarding me suspiciously. “Where are you going?” she demanded.
“To Highgate Cemetery, of course,” I said with conviction. “Stoker is in need of a rescue.”
Skip Notes
* A Grave Robbery